Owl voices as night spirits: an ethno-ornithological approach to the understanding of the significance of night bird calls and social control in traditional Nyungar culture Ken Macintyre 1 , Barb Dobson 1 * and Iva Hayward-Jackson 2 1 PO Box 359 Cottesloe, Perth, Western Australia 6911. www.anthropologyfromtheshed.com 2 Nyungar consultant & Land and Culture Protector, Perth, Western Australia. *Corresponding author: kmac01@iinet.net.au Abstract. In the dark world of night, strange or unsettling noises were not traditionally perceived as sounds of nature but as the unearthly cries or groans of legendary monsters, ancestral spirits, ghostly jannocks, troubled souls or jangas, foreboding spirits or sorcerers disguised as owls exacting revenge on lawbreakers. In Nyungar tradition throughout southwestern Australia there were many frightening tales of nocturnal monsters whose blood-curdling sounds provided the auditory mnemonics that awakened culturally internalized messages of caution and danger. These voices contained in oral narratives and instilled from a young age through storytelling, were once perceived not as night birds but as dangerous spirit beings that assumed the role of nocturnal social control and law enforcement agents. Our research revealed that there is a whole pantheon of night birds that once provided an omnipresent moral and social surveillance system. However, for the purpose of this paper only the variant fragments of one narrative involving the night monster nhewalong (also known by the names nyowalong, nyiwaloong, newulum, nurliem, nyurlam and nyoorlam) is discussed. Our paper relies primarily on ethnohistorical and archival materials and anthropological field consultations with Nyungar Elders and spokespersons over a number of years, especially with regards to their views on the cultural significance of owls and owl-like night birds. Many of the senior consultants interviewed during our research still retained remnant anxieties as a result of the cautionary narratives told to them as children involving dangerous night birds and ghostly spirits. Keywords: Nyungar, owls, sorcery, social control, southwestern Australia Introduction The Nyungar people of southwestern Australia were, and in some cases still are, culturally attuned to a wide variety of bird calls. This is reflected in many of their traditional onomatopoeic bird names or as one Nyungar Elder expressed it: “the bird calls its own name.” This name-calling is a means of identifying and classifying birds throughout Aboriginal Australia and many other cultures of the world, for example, Hull and Fergus (2017: 208) describe a traditional onomatopoeic bird-naming system found among the Ch’orti Mayan of southern Guatemala. Some nightbirds in Nyungar culture have self-announcing names, such as the Barking owl (Ninox connivens) known as waur (Von Brandenstein 1988:154) or woorup (literally, place of woor) and the Southern Boobook Owl (Ninox novaeseelandiae) known as gogoo (also goor-goor, goor-goor-da, gu-gu-mit, gogoomit). This bird’s onomatopoeic name is similarly rendered in the Martu language of the Pilbara region of Western Australia as goorgoor (Serventy and Whittell 1976: 300) and “koor-koo” by “the Aborigines of South Australia” (Gould 1865: 74). It is recorded as kokok in the Keramin and Yorta Yorta languages of Victoria (Brough Smyth 1878) and kwerrkwerrke “named for its call” in the Eastern Arrernte language of Central Australia (Thieberger and McGregor 1994: 281, 473). The name of the owlet nightjar is recorded for the Perth and southwest area by the naturalist John Gilbert (in Abbott 2009: 258) as jool-jine. This is possibly onomatopoeic deriving from its characteristic jurl-jurl, joor-joor or nju-nju call. The cry of this bird in some parts of Aboriginal Australia, such as among the Warlpari of the Northern Territory, is much dreaded because it is associated with sorcery and the kurdaitcha man (or “maban man”) and is believed to portend a death (Gosford 2009). In Nyungar culture the name of the nocturnal Bush Stone-curlew (Burhinus grallarius) recorded as wee-lo (Gilbert in Gould 1865), weloo (A.Y. Hassell 1894), wee-loo (Serventy and Whittell 1976:227) or whelow (Hassell in Davidson 1936) derives from its “whee-ieer-loo” call which, according to Elders interviewed by us, signified that a death was imminent. In the Perth area the whistling voice of the white-faced heron (Egretta novaehollandiae) known as wy-an (Gilbert in Gould 1865) was also associated with ominous events. This name or descriptor is synonymous with the term wy-aine which Grey records as meaning “to fear, to be afraid, to dread.” White-faced owls (i.e., Barn Owl Tyto alba and Australian Masked Owl Tyto novaehollandiae), as we will discuss later in this paper, were also much feared birds whose calls and presence were regarded as omens of death. Douglas (1976, 1996) describes them as “devil birds” or “death birds.” Many birds in Nyungar culture traditionally have more than one name. These may be viewed as descriptors rather than names as they often allude to a bird’s physical appearance, call, behaviour, habitat, economic, cultural or spiritual significance. We have been interested in night-birds, their sounds and significance in Nyungar culture for many years. In 2008 when we recorded the prominent “standing stone” known as the “Ancestral Owl Stone” at Red Hill, northeast of Perth (see Macintyre and Dobson 2009) which to this day continues to be of totemic and cultural significance to Nyungar people, and which at the time of our recording was about to be destroyed by hard-rock quarrying (see Fig. 1), we were suddenly catapulted into a dilemma as to where to find ethnohistorical information on the significance of “owls” and “owl stones” in Nyungar culture, together with contemporary Nyungar Elder knowledge, that would ensure the protection of this site under the current Western Australian Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972. Archival materials were thoroughly investigated for references to traditional Nyungar owl beliefs and collated together from the early colonial ethnohistorical accounts and word lists of Armstrong (1836), Bunbury (1836 in Bunbury and Morrell 1930), Grey (1840, 1841), Moore (1842) and Bates (in Bridge 1992) together with contemporary linguistic materials provided by Douglas (1976), Von Brandenstein (1988), Whitehurst (1992) and Dench (1994) in their wordlists. The colonial descriptions are often vague, fragmentary and confusing, referring in many cases to undefined “night birds, “nighthawks,” “night cuckoos” and “goatsuckers” - terms which relate to the European context rather than to local genera and species. These colonial and post-colonial descriptions all presuppose the existence of an indigenous Linnaean speciation model that somehow parallels that of Western ornithological science. However, Aboriginal people of southwestern Australia, like their counterparts throughout Australia, had evolved their own unique ornitho-classification system over many thousands of years prior to European colonisation. Their traditional ornitho-taxonomy and nomenclature system was based on criteria that were practical, utilitarian, logical and culturally relevant to a hunter-gatherer-horticultural existence, such as a bird’s distinctive call, prominent coloring, physical characteristic, behaviour, habitat, food preference or totemic, spiritual and cultural significance that enabled its easy identification. Birds featured prominently in traditional oral narratives as they were at the top of the plant and animal totemic hierarchy. To this day there is some confusion as to how night birds in Nyungar culture were classified other than by their voices, as they were mostly heard but not seen, with the exception of the white barn owls (T. alba and T. novaehollandiae) whose ghostly appearance and screeching night calls were regarded as dreaded omens portending death. It is not hard to imagine that these terrifying night sounds would have been associated in the traditional setting with recognisably different messages or signals of danger embedded in oral narratives. For non-ornithologists, such as ourselves, the individual screams, screeches and shrieks of owls and owl-like night birds are difficult to tell apart because each has a vast repertoire of sounds (alarm cries, distress, feeding, breeding, hunger calls etc.) and often the less commonly heard screams of night birds such as the Barking Owl (Ninox connivens), Tawny Frogmouth (Podargus strigoides) and Southern Boobook Owl (Ninox novaeseelandiae) are not recorded or accessible in audio format. In this paper we attempt to explain, from an anthropological perspective using the variant cultural narratives of nhewalong/newulum, how nocturnal owl sounds in traditional times became the culturally terrifying voices of socially controlling spirit-beings. In precolonial and early colonial times the darkness of night was perceived as a dangerous time when ghosts, demons, supernatural spirits and troubled souls were ever-present and ready to inflict disease and death on any law breaker, or to punish, harm or abduct children who wandered away from the safety of their campfires at night never to be seen again. The owl or mopoke was perceived as the totemic “winged familiar” or assistant of the “boylya-man” (sorcerer or “clever man,” commonly now referred to as “bulya-man”) and was believed capable of inflicting death and disease. The sorcerer was believed in some cases to transmute into an owl to police and enforce social control. It is for this reason that elderly Nyungar spokespersons whom we interviewed often referred to these owls as “bulya-birds” (sorcerer birds). In 1836, Frances Fraser Armstrong, the official Native Interpreter made a special reference to the owl as an agent of sickness and fear in Nyungar culture. He wrote: "The night bird, which the settlers call cuckoo (and the natives “gogoomit” or “woroongul,”) is regarded by the latter as the cause of all boils and eruptions on their bodies, which they believe it to produce by piercing them with its beak, in the night-time, while they are asleep." (F.F. Armstrong quoted in The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal 29 th October 1836). What Armstrong (1836) seems to be relating here is part of a narrative involving revenge sorcery where a sorcerer or “bulya-man” in the guise of his owl totem inflicts sickness and infection into the body of its victim. In traditional Aboriginal society disease was believed to be magically or supernaturally induced. It is interesting that Armstrong who was also a keen naturalist and museum collector did not attempt to identify this night bird to a Genus or species. This is surprising as there are only two Genera of owl (Ninox and Tyto) found in southwestern Australia, each consisting of two species: Southern boobook (N. novaeseelandiae), Barking owl (N. connivens), Eastern barn owl (T. alba) and Masked owl (T. novaehollandiae). Armstrong’s “night cuckoo” gogoomit may be viewed as the same bird as Moore’s gugumit (1842: 30, 33) or little brown owl (N. novaeseelandiae) whose name derives from its utterance gogoo and mit meaning “an agent.” This is believed to be the same bird ancestor as represented by the “Owl Stone” site at Red Hill, north east of Perth (Fig. 1). This paper could be looked upon as a journey through a veil of camouflage, concealment and night bird ventriloquy together with other physical characteristics and deceptive behaviours that owls have evolved to avoid detection. The term used by ecologists to refer to this complex of adaptations is crypsis. This paper investigates cryptid bird voices that once gave life and meaning to culturally constructed anthropomorphic beings in traditional Nyungar oral narratives, such as nhewalong (also known as nyowalong, nyiwaloong, newulum, nurliem, nyurlam, nyoorlam), whose role was to maintain a supernatural control over human movement and behaviour at night. Study Area The term Nyungar denotes Aboriginal people whose language and home country is in the southwest of Western Australia (Fig. 2). The area lies south and west of a line drawn from south of Geraldton to east of Esperance (for detailed map see Tindale 1940: 45). This line once defined the cultural and linguistic boundaries between those who practised circumcision and the Nyungar people who did not. The Nyungar language is fundamentally similar throughout most of southwestern Australia, as noted by Grey (1840: v), Moore (1842) and Bates (1914:65), with regional and dialectical variations. It is part of and partially defines the family language group known as Pama-Nyungan (Thieberger and McGregor 1994: xii). The term Nyungar can be spelled in a number of ways, including Nyoongar, Nyungar, Nyungah or Noongar, depending on group or individual preference. It originally translates as “man” or nowadays as “people.” After European colonisation in 1829 Nyungar people became dispossessed from their traditional homelands and as a result of economic and political forces beyond their control, they became an impoverished and subjugated minority population controlled by government departments. Today this is changing with university education and a revival of their language, culture and political activism. Methods We have been compiling information on the traditional and contemporary views of Nyungar people on the cultural significance of owls and other night birds over several decades during our anthropological fieldwork throughout parts of southwestern Australia. In 2008 we did extensive research into indigenous beliefs about owls in order to prepare a report to protect the “Owl Stone” site at Red Hill from hard rock quarrying in the Darling Escarpment (Fig. 1). Owing to the dearth of available published information on owl beliefs in traditional Nyungar society, we were forced to rely on fragmentary references contained in the early colonial newspapers (dating back to the 1830’s) and sparse references contained in ethno-historical sources (e.g., early explorers’ diaries, journals, wordlists) and local ethno-ornithological sources (Serventy and Whittell 1948, 1976). The results of our archival research were discussed and analysed with senior Elder (the late) Mr Albert Corunna between 2008 and 2017. The co-author of this report, Nyungar consultant Mr Iva Hayward-Jackson, has kindly shared his personal insights on owls and other night birds confirming their role as social control agents. Ecological Context of the Night Bird Species There are eight nocturnal bird species in southwestern Australia that can provide the types of calls described from the study area: Masked Owl (Tyto novaehollandiae); Eastern Barn Owl (Tyto alba); Barking Owl (Ninox connivens); Southern Boobook (Ninox novaeseelandiae); Australian Owlet-nightjar (Aegotheles cristatus); Tawny Frogmouth (Podargus strigoides); Spotted Nightjar (Eurostopodus argus); and Bush Stone-curlew (Burhinus grallarius). Both the Barking Owl and Masked Owl are now very rare in southwestern Australia (see Liddelow et al. 2002). Many of these night birds are very difficult to see, particularly without modern aids, so it is not surprising that species identifications are challenging. Results Totemic Ancestral Owls and the Origin of Nyungar Society Our research over many years has revealed that there are multiple origin narratives in Nyungar culture involving different totemic ancestral birds, such as the wau-oo (mopoke), beenar (white owl), wardong (Australian raven, colloquially known as “crow”), manitch (white cockatoo), wadje (emu), eroto (pink eared duck, also white winged duck), kuljak (black swan) and others. However, a foundation totemic creation belief that was collected by Daisy Bates in 1923 from her senior female Nyungar informant Wilganan stands out in that it describes two night birds, the mopoke (Wau-oo) and the white owl (Beenar), which during the cold, dark, formless period of the Nyitting (Dreaming) were said to have created all the Bibbulmun (Nyungar) people and given them their social structure by dividing them into two moieties manitchmat (lit. manitch, white cockatoo + mat, family, leg, stock) and wordungmat (lit. wordung, crow + mat, family, leg, stock). These two “halves” of Nyungar society were named after birds that symbolized darkness and light. Our archival research combined with the stated views of contemporary Nyungar Elders confirm that predatory night birds, such as the owls, have a powerful ancestral and traditional cultural significance in Nyungar culture. A fragment of the owl creation myth as told to Daisy Bates by Wilganan is as follows: 'Wau-oo, the mopoke, assisted by his relation, Beenar, the white owl, made all the Bibbulmun [Nyungar] and divided them, saying “Manitchmat must marry Wordungmat only' (Bates 1923). According to this view, two ancestral owls created the two main classes or divisions of Nyungar society: Manitchmat (white cockatoo, the light moiety) and Wordungmat (crow, dark moiety). These binary totemic divisions were further subdivided into animal, bird and plant totems that were also classified as “dark” or “light” depending on their culturally perceived attributes and symbolism (Bates in Bridge 1992). It is unclear to us exactly how these dark-light categories were conceptualized and applied from an indigenous viewpoint as there is little ethno-historical or contemporary information available which today recognizes the importance of this dark-light dichotomy that once permeated all aspects of Nyungar culture. This dark-light structuring principle once extended to include all life forms as well as natural inanimate and human made objects (Bates in Bridge 1992). The extent of its complexity is impossible to ascertain outside its traditional context, although fragmentary ethno-historical and contemporary information would suggest that the cultural classification of birds, animals and plants into “dark” or “light” totemic categories would have depended on a variety of factors, singly or in combination, such as prominent physical characteristics (e.g., dark or light coloring); nocturnal or diurnal behavior patterns; seasonal phenological breeding cycles or photoperiodism (e.g., response to day length); migratory patterns or their spiritual significance in the cultural creation narratives. The cultural and ancestral significance of owls and owl-like birds in traditional and contemporary society were described to us by a group of Nyungar Elders during our field investigations of the “Owl stone” megalith at Red Hill in the City of Swan in October 2008. They suggested that the name of this prominent standing stone site Gogomat or “Ancestral Owl” (literally gogo, owl + mat, family, leg, stock, branch, ancestry) was probably an ancestral link to contemporary Nyungar people from the time of the Dreaming. On arrival at the site, they insisted on performing a ritual of respect involving the placement of leaves of the balga or Grass tree (Xanthorrhea preissii) at the base of the standing stone to announce their visit and purpose. They said they did not have any knowledge of the narrative associated with this specific site but were aware of the appropriate rituals that were once performed at another Owl Stone site in the Chittering valley recorded by George Fletcher Moore (1835). They said that they could only speak for the country of their own ancestors, not that of another group. They emphasized that the site of the “Ancestral Owl Stone” at Red Hill had great significance to them and their ancestors but some of them felt anxious in its presence as they had been told stories since childhood of the dangers associated with night birds, most especially owls. Owls and owl-like night birds were often referred to vaguely and collectively as mopoke (or “mopok”) by our Nyungar informants (Macintyre and Dobson 2017). Since childhood they had been more concerned about the consequences of hearing the owl’s cry than any other considerations such as its Linnaean-defined species which in such a stressful situation had little if any relevance to them. Night birds were mostly unseen and variously referred to as mopok, warra (meaning bad, dangerous), “bulya-bird” (sorcerer-birds) and “winnaitch” meaning death, dangerous or forbidden. The term winnaitch is also spelled in the literature as youanitch, wannaitch, winnaitch, wanniche or wonitj variously translating as danger, death, evil spirit, forbidden, taboo or ghost, depending on the context. The term has been applied to sacred sites that are considered dangerous or taboo to those who are not initiated or who do not know the appropriate cultural rituals for the place. The term youanitch was recorded by Hassell (1894) as the name of the tawny frogmouth. This is a “winnaitch” or “wannitch” bird, according to contemporary Elders whom we interviewed. Gray (1987 in Bindon and Chadwick 1992: 194) records the term for owl as youaintch and Douglas (1976: 81) refers to yuwindj as “‘devil bird’ (prob. the barn owl). Said to frequent the graveyard at Gnowangerup; its call produces fear of a death.” It was suggested to us by a senior Nyungar spokesperson that in traditional times all of these warra night birds would have had powerful and dangerous totemic names that could not be used by the uninitiated or those without the proper knowledge for fear of invoking the spirit’s presence. It would have been wannitch to utter the name of such a powerful spirit, especially to a Western recorder, for fear of cultural repercussions. Some Contemporary Nyungar Views on Night Birds In conversations with Nyungar consultants about frightening night birds, the term “owl” is often attached to “mopoke-owl” or “frogmouth-owl” with some confusion, especially when one tries to clarify exactly which bird they are talking about. Some of the Elders’ views about owls are recorded verbatim below: 'The one bird that Nyungahs fear is the goombagarri [frogmouth, mopoke]. It’s a warra [bad] bird. When you hear that bird at night, it is an omen. You must find it, kill it and burn it, but it’s hard to find because it is the same color as the bark of the tree. If that bird can sing and get away with it, it’s a death omen, it means someone will die.' 'It was like a spirit in the night and could do bad (warra) things to you.' 'We were always told to watch out and to hide and be still if you ever heard the mopoke cry out, because this was a spirit bird which could see you in the night. Even in the daytime my parents told me never to harm an owl - they were dangerous.' 'I remember an old story that my father told me that boylya men [witchdoctors or sorcerers] would turn into owls at night time and chase after a person they had a grudge for and when they found them they’d put a magic curse on them while they were asleep and they would die the next day.' 'The old people would tell stories that if you did anything wrong at night the owl would see you and would tell a boylya-man who could speak owl language and he would come after you and punish you. You think that people can’t see you in the dark, but the owl people can see you.' 'When we were kids we were so scared at night, we didn’t look around, we just hid under the blanket and didn’t move a muscle.' One Nyungar Elder recalled his childhood days at a fringe camp in Swanbourne. He reminisced: 'It was so quiet at night in our camp at Swanbourne. If we kids heard any strange sounds we would hide under the blankets for hours because we thought the jingee were coming to get us.' Further contemporary views are recorded in a separate paper https://www.anthropologyfromtheshed.com/owl-beliefs-in-nyungar-culture  Nhewalong In the dark world of night, strange or unsettling noises were not perceived by traditional Nyungar people as the sounds of nature but were viewed as the unearthly cries, groans and screams of legendary monsters, foreboding spirits and sorcerers disguised as owls exacting revenge on wrongdoers. These dangerous and dreaded agents of the night served to maintain the moral and social order. One of these ogres of the night was a jannock known as nhewalong. The earliest narrative involving nhewalong was recorded in the 1840’s by the naturalist and Native Interpreter to the Swan River Colony, Francis F. Armstrong, after he had himself heard, while travelling in the bush in the vicinity of Perth, the unsettling, shrill and incongruous cry, like a human in distress, said to be the voice of nhewalong. The Inquirer newspaper (1846) reports his experience as follows: 'Mr. F. Armstrong, the Native Interpreter, has communicated to us the following curious account of a very mysterious sound which has been heard in the bush in several parts of this colony, and concerning which the natives have, as usual, an extraordinary superstition. Mr. Armstrong says that a peculiarly shrill and discordant cry, at times very much like the complaint of a human being in a suffering state, has been heard by several persons and on one occasion by himself. It is heard invariably in the nighttime, and generally in lonely situations. Mr. Armstrong says that on the occasion of his hearing this cry, he could not dispossess himself of the belief that it came from some person who had been lost in the bush, so exactly did it resemble the human voice in distress, and that although he was told by the natives who were with him what it was, or rather what they deemed it to be, he staid [sic.] on the spot until he was certain that there was no person in want of succour. The natives have a superstitious dread of this cry, concerning which they give the following explanation. They state that it proceeds from an enormous monster which prowls in the forests at night, subsisting on the gum of the cabbage tree! [Nuytsia floribunda, Christmas tree] for the convenience of carrying which he is provided with a great number of bags; that he ascends the trees in search of this gum, of which the natives take care to leave the largest and best pieces for his use, lest they should incur his displeasure. The name given by the natives to this curious monster is “Nhewalong,” and he is represented to be so powerful that escape from his grasp is hopeless, while from the number of bags he has about him, it is impossible to spear him, in the words of the natives, “strike where you will, you hit a bag.” It is curious how the notion of such an animal should have suggested itself' (Armstrong 1846). Even though Armstrong (1846) is perturbed by the mysterious and chilling bird cry, he discounts the native explanation of nhewalong as being a monster protecting his food source, that is, the gum of the “cabbage tree” (the colonial name for Nuytsia floribunda). The Inquirer further states that: 'Mr. Armstrong feels certain that the cry proceeds from some kind of bird; yet he states that he has collected every variety to be found in the neighbourhood of the Swan, Canning, and Murray, without getting it' (Armstrong 1846:3). Phillip Chauncy, Assistant Surveyor for the Perth region in the 1840’s records a similar narrative involving the mysterious nyowalong but in this version his voice is described as “a short, sharp screech at every step.” He writes: 'The Swan River Aborigines say that an evil being, called Nyowalong, wanders about in the night-time, in the Banksia forests, collecting the gum of the Nuytsia floribunda which he puts into bags hanging all round his body. They assert that he is like an old man walking about in half-sitting attitude, and carrying a wanna, or yam-stick, and that he utters a short, sharp screech at every step. I enquired why they never speared him; but they were indignant at the idea and replied – “One might as well try to spear a grass tree, he is so surrounded with gum bags”. Although they eat the gum which exudes from the acacias, hakeas, and other trees, they never touch the Nuytsia gum; for, were they to do so, they say Nyowalong would certainly do them some secret injury; but the fact is, it is not an edible gum – they make a virtue of necessity' (Chauncy in Brough-Smyth 1878: 267-268). The bird cries described by Armstrong (1846) and Chauncy (in Brough-Smyth 1878) attributed to nhewalong (or nyowalong) would appear to be very different owl-like sounds. From Armstrong’s (1846) description one could imagine this to be the rarely heard night scream of the Barking Owl (N. connivens) while Chauncy’s description sounds more like the shrieking voice of one of the barn owls (T. alba or T. novaehollandiae). Or could it be the penetrating and repetitive juu-juu sound of the Australian Owlet-nightjar (A. cristatus)? It is virtually impossible to determine night bird sounds from a written description, especially one that was recorded almost 180 years ago. Chauncy (in Brough-Smyth 1878:267) is emphatic that the gum of N. floribunda is “not an edible gum.” Yet was the inedibility of this gum and its possible toxic consequence to human consumption sufficient reason to provoke the night monster Nyowalong’s deterrent cries? Surely, if the gum was inedible, this would have been well-known in the traditional knowledge system (TKS). So why would they even contemplate eating an inedible substance? When we asked Nyungar Elder (the late) Albert Corunna about this, he was unsure about the toxicity of the gum as he had never eaten it or knew anyone who had but he said that the screaming spirit would have alerted people to keep away from the moojar trees (N. floribunda). He commented “when we were kids, we didn’t go near those trees.” Other Elders endorsed this same view (see Macintyre and Dobson 2019). In the very early part of the twentieth century Joobaitch, who was Daisy Bates’ senior most male informant for the Guildford/Perth area stated: 'When I die I shall go down through the sea to Kurannup, where all my people will be waiting on the shore with meat food, my mother and my woman, my father and my brothers. Before it sets out on its journey my kaanya must be free to rest on the kaanya-tree [Nuytsia floribunda]. Since nyitting (cold) times, all Bibbulmun kaan-ya have rested on this tree on their way to Kurannup, and I have never broken a branch or flower or sat in the shade of the tree, because it is the tree of the dead and winnaitch - sacred' (Bates 1936). The sacred kaanya tree is commonly known by Nyungar people as moojar or its many variant spellings mooja, moodja, moojarr, moodjar, mudjarr, mutyal, modjar, mutyal, mutdhoor depending on the recorder. The earliest reference to its Nyungar name is by Lyon (1833 in Green 1979: 171) where he records mutdhoor as “Nuytsia, floribunda – the cabbage tree.” The meaning of the term mooja is uncertain but it would seem to suggest “prohibited” or “taboo.” Recently departed souls were traditionally regarded as dangerous to the living and were at all times to be avoided. In the nineteenth century when Armstrong (1836) and Chauncy (in Brough-Smyth 1878) were recording aspects of Nyungar society it was culturally forbidden to mention the name of a recently deceased person (a practice still observed by Aboriginal people in the Western Desert) for fear of calling up the spirit of the deceased person who may do them some harm. Fear of recently deceased souls (kaanya or gurdumit) caused much anxiety and for this reason they were fully respected and avoided. Campsites were relocated after a death and a separate campfire was often provided at a distance from the camp to give warmth and comfort to the newly deceased soul before it started on its journey to the land of the ancestors. Gnolum – the Silent jannock '…a very tall, thin spirit or jannock with a long thin beard. A member of the cubine [mopoke] totem. Wears no clothing except cubine feathers stuck all over the head' (Hassell in Davidson 1935:277). Gnolum was said to have “very big round eyes that can look everywhere” (Hassell 1975: 65) and was reputed to carry a long thin wanna or digging stick about three times his height which he held in front of him and kicked whenever he moved, leaving behind a distinctive trail of his presence in the forest. This is how Hassell (in Davidson 1936) described the nocturnal jannock that frequented isolated forests and woodlands in the Jerramongup and surrounding areas of lower southwestern Australia. Gnolum was a silent night stalker said to entice young boys who wandered away from their campsite, alluring them with sweet-tasting roots mungah or fat-rich bardi (beetle or moth larvae). Hassell (1975: 65) comments that “In the night he cannot be seen except on very bright moonlight nights, then often his eyes can be seen through branches of trees but not his body.” Ethel Hassell (1975) states that gnolum’s totem or cubine (courbourne) is the mopoke and that he would cover his head with the feathers of this bird as an outward symbol of his totem. We would suggest that his mopoke feather adornment helped to camouflage and empower him with the predatory attributes of his mopoke totem, such as piercing night vision, astute hearing and noiseless flight. From Ethel’s records, A.Y. Hassell (1884) referred to cubine as the mopoke owl (N. novaeseelandiae) or possibly to the Tawny Frogmouth (P. strigoides) because at the time of her recording the frogmouth was often referred to as mopoke. While we were conducting field interviews at the “Owl Stone” site we could find no consensus among Nyungar spokespersons as to which category the “mopok” belonged. Some thought it was the boobook owl while others were convinced it was gambigorn (also rendered as goombagarri or kambigur) or what they called the “the owl with the big mouth.” Even contemporary wordlists compiled by Nyungar linguists and researchers record tawny frogmouth under the category of “owl.” For example, Whitehurst (1992: 43) records kambany as “owl (Tawny Frogmouth)” and Walley et al (2014: 204) record gambigorn as “Owl-Tawny Frogmouth,” also known as djoowi. At the time of our field research we were unaware that the Tawny Frogmouth (kambigorn) was a clever voice mimic and that it sometimes gave a mo-pok call “resembling that of the Boobook Owl” (Serventy and Whittell 1976: 305). Many Australian birds are known to practice voice mimicry (but not owls). Australian linguists Dixon et al (2006: 81) note that “Another name for the boobook, and for some other nocturnal birds, is mopoke.” This fits with the way some Nyungar people use the term mopoke (“mopok” or “mopoak”) to refer to more than one species of night bird. As we have noted elsewhere: The origin of the term mopoke, and whether it derives from an Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal language, is uncertain. Interestingly, Von Brandenstein (1979: 15), who specializes in the Nyungar language, translates mopoke (or what he records as ‘maup-puaqq’ or mawp, skin + poaak, cloak) as literally “bark-cloak”, “skin-cloak” or “cloak skin”, thus implying a Nyungar origin for the term (mawp-poaak). This might explain from an emic Nyungar perspective as to why the tawny frogmouth (P. strigoides) is sometimes referred to as mopoke (“mopok” or mopoak”). Ethel Hassell's (1975) depiction of gnolum as a silent night stalker in his “mopoak" feather disguise could be viewed as a stark “stranger-danger” warning to caution boys from wandering away from the security of their group into remote areas and accepting food enticements from strangers. Hassell (1975) emphasises that gnolum had no interest in girls, women or grown men - it was only boys. At the time of her recording in the 1880’s there was still a lingering belief that Aboriginal people who lived in proximity to border areas greatly distrusted outsiders, especially those who practiced circumcision and other associated rituals that were alien and feared by Nyungar people. There was always the constant fear of losing boys to outside groups never to be seen again. Nyurlam Douglas (1976: 23) records another version of the gnolum narrative where he describes nyurlam or njulam as a “night hawk,” “female ghost” or “devil woman.” He also introduces the notion of njulam as a “devil bird” (1976: 87) a term with strong Christian overtones. He does not explain what is meant by “devil bird,” other than recording it as a “nighthawk” or “female ghost” called njulam or nyurlam. In a later publication Douglas (1996) records nyoorlam as a “death bird” or “devil bird.” The altered spelling of nyurlam to nyoorlam would appear to derive from Nyungar linguist Rosemary Whitehurst’s (1992: 23) wordlist where she records nyoorlam as nighthawk or devil bird. Douglas’ nyurlam (or njulam) “is said to flit through the Christmas trees (Nuytsia floribunda) unseen and unheard except for its njuu njuu call” (1976: 67). Her cultural bogeywoman role was to deter youngsters from climbing the brittle branches of the N. floribunda which, according to Douglas’ (1976: 23) informants “is regarded as unsafe for climbing and keeps them from eating the sticky gum found on this parasitic tree.” It would seem that the nhewalong or nyurlam narratives (with the exception of Hassell’s gnolum) involve a mythological being which cautions people, especially children, against approaching the N. floribunda which was regarded as the kaanya tree or “tree of souls” or “ghost tree” (Bates in Bridge 1992). It is unclear as to whether Hassell’s gnolum with its silent voice and different social function is a local variant of the nyurlam narrative or something different. The gender of this jannock has transformed from male (Armstrong 1846, Chauncy in Brough-Smyth 1878 and Hassell in Davidson 1935) to female (Douglas 1976) or did it ever have a defined gender? Mythological beings in Aboriginal narratives are quite often of indeterminate gender. Working with Aboriginal people throughout Western Australia we have found in our discussions involving the gender specificity of animal and bird totemic beings at times difficult to ascertain owing to the linguistic and cultural nuances that are well-understood by the informant who assumes the recorder has similar insights into the ability of ancestral totemic spirits to shape-shift and gender-shift at will. The voice of nyurlam is no longer the human-like distress cry described by Armstrong (1846) but a penetrating njuu-njuu sound made as it flits through the Christmas trees (N. floribunda) (Douglas 1976: 67). This would suggest a small bird, although Douglas’ reference to an undefined “night hawk” does not help us to identify this bird. We suspect that he may be referring to the insectivorous Australian Owlet-nightjar (A. cristatus) as this is a small night bird with big owl-like eyes and it makes a njuu-njuu sound. As we have already noted for the Warlpiri of the Central Desert region the juu-juu (or jurl-jurl) cry of this little bird is dreaded because of its association with sorcery and the kurdaitcha man. It is known as “the kurdaitcha bird” (Gosford 2009). Is it a coincidence that the Nyungar name for the Australian Owlet-nightjar is jool-jine (Gilbert in Abbott 2009), possibly suggesting an onomatopoeic name based on its “jool” sounding utterance? Or is it a more sinister reference to this bird’s mythological reputation, as djul, according to Grey (1840) and Moore (1842), means “bad.” The djul, jul or njul in Douglas’ “njulam” may well signify a bad omen or spirit. Moore (1842: 45) comments on the Australian Owlet-nightjar’s mythological powers stating that this “small black goatsucker” is “supposed to have the power of afflicting human beings with sore eyes.” When we asked Nyungar Elders about this little owl-like bird, which one of them referred to as the “darrin bird,” he said it was a “warra bird” (warra meaning bad, dangerous) because according to stories he had been told when he was young it was believed that when a person slept, the painless bite from this bird could cause a range of disfiguring skin ailments and night fevers. “It can make you very sick.” He was unsure of its species but commented that it looks “like a small woodartji owl” which lives in tree hollows. Woodartji refers to a small humanoid or spirit being that can be dangerous to those who trespass without permission into forbidden or wannitch places. There are many references in Nyungar word lists and dictionaries to nyurlam and its variant spellings nyoorlam, nurliem, newulum, nuelum and noorliem. For example, Alfred J. Bussell (n.d) who prior to his death in 1940 compiled a word list of the Dordenup language of the Busselton area together with his niece Dr. Buller-Murphy (n.d.) records the name “nurliem” as meaning “devil.” In their word list they record “nurliem mia” as “cave;” also, nurliem miah as “cave, cliff;” nurliem karla as “devil’s fire” and nurliem karrunger wongie as the “devil’s roar.” These terms possibly derive from fragments of a local narrative relating to a terrifying night spirit/ monster known as nurliem that made its home in caves and hollows in cliffs and when disturbed or angered, it would roar (nurliem karrunger wongie). Is it only from nurliem’s voice that it can be identified to an owl-like bird or are there other recognisable characteristics of nurliem mentioned in different oral versions of the narrative, such as his home being nurliem miah, in a cave or cliff. It is well known that barn owls (Tyto) inhabit a wide variety of habitats including holes in cliffs and caves, especially the Masked Owl (T. novaehollandiae) which is commonly known as the “Cave Owl” (Serventy and Whittell 1976: 303). According to Morecombe and Stewart (2011), the Barking Owl (N. connivens) also nests in caves and crevices in cliffs when suitable trees are not available. Nyiwaloong The linguist Rosemary Whitehurst (1992: 23) records nyoorlam as being a “night hawk” and a “devil bird.” With a different spelling she further records nyiwaloong as an “owl (brown back with white face).” Her brief description suggests that nyiwaloong belongs to the Tyto genus, possibly the Australian Masked Owl (T. novaehollandiae). Walley et al (2014: 120, 204) confirm this species attribution. Local ornithologists Serventy and Whittell (1948, 1976: 302), who were writing before Douglas (1976) and Whitehurst (1992), assign the loud and frightening cries of the “legendary monster” known as “Nuelum” or “Newulum” by the Aboriginal people of the Gnowangerup area as probably the “blood-curdling shriek” or “screaming woman” call of the Barking Owl (N. connivens). So, where does this leave us? It is all becoming rather surrealistic as we have different owls and owl-like night birds morphing in and out of the same or similar mythological persona. We have Armstrong (1846) describing the shrill and discordant cry of nhewalong as resembling a human in suffering; Chauncy describing nyowalong as uttering a “short, sharp shriek at every step;” Douglas (1976) assigning the cries of nyurlam (or njulam) to an unidentified nighthawk (which we suspect from its indigenous rendered njuu-njuu sound may be the Australian Owlet-nightjar) and Whitehurst (1992) attributing nyiwaloong to the white-faced owl with a brown back. To top it off, Serventy and Whittell (1948, 1976) ascribe newulum’s voice to the infrequently heard shrieking woman call of the Barking Owl (N. connivens). This makes the task of pinpointing the identity of newulum difficult as some recorders describe it as a ghost or monster, others attribute it to the voice of a night bird and others to the name of a night bird. We seem to have reached an impasse in our hunt for the identity of this nocturnal cryptid. Nhewalong has been attributed to two different groups of owl or owl voices: Tyto and Ninox, these are the only owl genera found in southwestern Australia. Could representatives from these two ancestral owl groupings give voice (or voices) to the mysterious nhewalong? Some years ago when we asked Nyungar Elder (the late) Albert Corunna as to which owl he believed could be the voice of nhewalong (or newulum) he seemed amused by our dilemma and said “To the “old people” it didn’t matter. They were not listening to a bird but the message of the ghost or spirit. That’s what you’ve got to understand.” Discussion: Spirit Voices of the Night It is common for indigenous narratives to vary from region to region and intra-regionally as well as to change over time as a result of adaptations to new circumstances and cultural relevance. Different versions of the same story may be told, depending on place, time, context, who is telling the story, audience and for what purpose. One of the problems that besets those with a Western scientific background who are intent on uncovering nocturnal mythological cryptids is trying to pinpoint a historically described sound to a specific night bird. The physical appearance of the bird and its Western scientific classification is of little relevance to a traditional group who regard the mythological character as a dangerous night spirit. In Hassell’s (1975) narrative gnolum is without a voice. Could this mean that gnolum uses silence and stealth to attract and abduct boys in quiet isolated places? We would imagine that a silent prowler as described in the narrative would be more effective in coaxing boys than a noisy night screamer. Hassell (1975) alludes to gnolum having the attributes and behaviors of his “mopoak” totem (possibly N. novaeseelandia) and using the feathered camouflage and noiseless flight of his cubine (totem) he prowls around and kidnaps his victims. Hassell (1975: 60) states that “The jannocks very rarely made a noise but one can feel when they are about.” She describes a number of different types of jannocks and says that whenever they were heard screaming it signaled that they were fighting and when they were angry, they were very dangerous. We tried to elucidate from Elders their views on the cries and significance of night birds but despite having strong Christian backgrounds and living like us in a suburban environment, they still admitted to feeling anxious when discussing “warra” (bad, dangerous) birds. When we asked them about the owls, tawny frogmouths, owlet-nightjars and nightjars, most said that they had not heard these sounds (except for the “mopok”) but they could imagine the fear that would have been felt by the “old people” on hearing these random outbursts in the quiet of night. They agreed that such thoughts made them anxious. We could understand their anxiety, as owls and owl-like birds under the cover of darkness are invisible and all that exists of their presence is their voice and any raucous screech or human-like scream in the stillness of night can be very unsettling. It is easy to imagine in an isolated bush setting how Nyungar people on hearing a sudden high pitched scream or shriek emanating from close-by or afar with the sound magnified or distorted by the echoes of night, would have been filled with apprehension from their internalized knowledge of the culturally foreboding consequences of these night sounds. These auditory mnemonics that were stored in the collective cultural memory forewarned of danger and the need to perform propitiatory rituals or other culturally appropriate actions. Nyungar spokesperson Hayward-Jackson said: 'There are so many sounds in the bush at night, it’s hard to distinguish what’s what. But the “old people” they knew all those sounds and what they meant. They lived with them all the time.' He said that on occasion when he had camped in the bush he had heard unnerving sounds coming from the darkness which had made him feel nervous. He said he did not know if they were the cries of birds or possums. “They sound alike.” Another Elder pointed out that “even though we don’t know some of the old stories, there’s still something inside us that makes us cold with fear when we hear the sound of an owl.” When we probed deeper into this, we found that the anxiety they were referring to usually stemmed from experiences or stories they had heard as children involving fearful bogeymen, bogeywomen and terrifying owl-like night birds that were believed to be associated with physical harm and death. As Nyungar language and culture were based on oral tradition, all cultural knowledge had to be committed to memory through a combination of means including song, dance, chanting, storytelling, poetic verse, totemic rituals and narratives. This oral tradition necessitated an economy of words. Cultural constructs, knowledge and meaning were encoded into a system of mnemonics (e.g., key words, phrases, short verse) and auditory and visual cues that assisted in triggering memory processes and mental associations relating to essential knowledge embedded in song lines, totemic mythologies and rituals. All of these mechanisms helped to provide practical instructions on how to survive, economically, socially and culturally as a hunter-gatherer-cultivator people over many thousands of years. The use of oral narrative as a means of controlling social behaviour is well recognised in anthropology. In this paper we have tried to show how the ventriloquism of unseen night birds once mimicked the terrifying voices of supernatural spirits and jannocks providing a clever and ingenious means of social control at night. This was recognized by (the late) Professor Eric ten Ra, anthropologist and linguist, who commented that: 'The ancestral inventors of Aboriginal mythology were clever in that they used distinctive, rare and frightening noises of night owls in the social construction of mythical beings that became animated and demonized in the cultural memory' (ten Raa 1993, personal communication). Ten Raa (1993, personal communication) further suggested that these anthropomorphized spirit beings may have had their own culturally recognized repertoire of cries reflecting their different psychological moods and that within certain localities where ancestral or mythical beings were believed to frequent, the local group would have been intimately aware of the messages and consequences of these calls. It makes anthropological sense that the voices of nhewalong (nyiawoolong, newulum, nyurlam, nurliem) may have been represented by more than a single night bird sound, and possibly even a composite of night bird voices, that may have reflected the different psychological moods (angry, hungry, sulky, silent) of this social-controlling agent of the night. It would seem that in traditional times the voices of owls and their nocturnal colleagues provided a range of auditory mnemonics that once triggered important cultural warnings, internalized from a very young age, that were effective in ensuring moral and social compliance. Some of these stories, even though they have lost their relevance as a social sanctioning device, are still told to this day as part of contemporary Nyungar literature. Urgent need for Protection of the Sacred Ancestral Owl Stone The Owl Stone is a unique site of great significance to Nyungar people in southwestern Australia. It is located on the Darling Escarpment in pristine bushland bordering the John Forrest National Park about 25 km northeast of Perth, Western Australia. The land is privately owned by a German cement company whose daily hard rock quarrying operations prohibit Aboriginal people and the public from visiting the site. The Owl Stone is part of a wider site complex that includes traditional campsites, ochre deposits, petroglyphs and associated mythological sites (see https://www.anthropologyfromtheshed.com/aboriginal-sites-are-an-important-part-of-the-heritage-of-the-whole-community . There are concerns about the long-term stability of this prominent "standing stone" site as it is highly vulnerable to the constant vibrations from rock blasting. It is the view of the Nyungar co-author of this paper and the senior most Elder (the late) Albert Corunna that if this site was opened up to Nyungar people, and to local and international visitors, it would provide a much-needed positive focus for promoting Nyungar culture and showcasing a remarkable example of its pre-colonial culture. It could become 'a place of learning’ where young Nyungar people are trained as environmental managers and site rangers enabling them to protect their sacred sites and to "care for country.” Acknowledgements We would like to thank David H. Johnson, Director of the Global Owl Project for inviting us to participate in this project and for his enthusiastic encouragement and advice on our paper. We thank all those Nyungar Elders (past and present) who over the years have assisted us by providing cultural information without which this paper would not have been possible. In particular, we would like to acknowledge the insights provided by Nyungar Elder (the late) Mr. Albert Corunna who up until his recent death had been closely involved in the protection of the totemic Owl Stone site at Red Hill, north east of Perth. We also thank Rodney P. Kavanagh for reviewing this manuscript and for his data and insights about the night birds of southwestern Australia. This document is in the process of being published in the volume "Owls in Myth and Culture" Johnson, D.H. (ed.) by Johns Hopkins University Press. A final citation will be given here once the volume has been published. We would also like to thank Emily ten Raa for her painting of the Barking Owl (Ninox connivens), acrylic on jarrah, from her 'Animate Objects' Exhibition in 2016, which features as the cover photo for this article. References Cited Abbott, I. 2009. Aboriginal Names of Bird Species in South-West Western Australia, with Suggestions for their Adoption into Common Usage. 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